Free Spit Delaney's Island by Jack Hodgins Page A

started to
ache. Charlene set them out on the back seat, went back to fill a plastic bag
she’d found, then got into the car and slammed the door. “Too bad I don’t
have time to pick another hub cap full for Bysshe,” she said.
    Mrs. Starbuck started her motor. “Them three,” she said. “They’ll kill
somebody yet. No sense at all.”
    â€œOh they’ve got sense all right,” she said. “They just don’t know it was
meant to be used. What brought you up this way?”
    â€œNot sightseeing exactly. You should’ve heard the story I had to tell that
watchman. I ended up doubting it myself. That Bysshe rode into my yard
and right up onto the verandah and said ‘Guess who’s just starting down
the side of Handlebar Hill?’ I told him I hoped it was doom, heading for
him, but he laughed and said no it was Charlene Porter who was too
scared to ride back.”
    â€œThat’s a lie. He left me.”
    â€œI figured it was. I thought, well I can’t afford to see Cut Off from the
air so why not a bird’s-eye view from the hills? Here I am, and look at that
sight.”
    They both looked down at the land below, a thick green rug with roads
like worm trails winding through, farm fields like shaved-off squares.
The strait, blue-white from here, looked full and thick and slow. “Let’sget,” Charlene said. “Those blackberries are soft and this sun’ll drip juice
all over your back seat.”
    The next day she walked over to help make jam but Mrs. Starbuck already had the berries on her stove. “They haven’t boiled yet,” she said, “you
can help me scald out the bottles.”
    She washed the jam bottles in the sink with hot water and soap, then
set them on a rack and let Charlene pour boiling water from the kettle
over them.
    â€œBysshe, you’re in this bottle, stop screaming. Percy, here you are, here’s
your turn, take it like a man. Shelley, don’t cry, it’ll only last a minute. No
sense swimming, it takes the skin off anyway.”
    â€œI’m surprised at you,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “A person brought up the
way you are shouldn’t talk like that. Leave me to do the mean things.”
    â€œThere’s nothing mean about you,” she said. “I’ve never seen you mean.”
    Mrs. Starbuck chuckled. “Oh, I learned a few things from my husband.
He was an expert.”
    â€œHow come you never had any kids?”
    Mrs. Starbuck turned away quickly. “Here. Look here. These berries
are started to boil. You take this wooden spoon and stir a while.”
    All that morning they worked together (like mother and daughter, she
thought) until every one of those berries, mashed down and sweetened
with sugar, was safely stuffed inside a jar and capped with wax.
    Mrs. Starbuck closed her eyes to breathe in the smell. And in the silence
Charlene heard a sound in the attic. A bird has got in, she thought, for it
was nothing louder than a small body hitting once against a board. It could
even have been something knocked over by a mouse or rat. “There’s something alive up there,” she cried. “Hey you, come down! Mrs. Starbuck,
you’ve got bats in your attic!”
    Mrs. Starbuck sat down heavily, dropped her body into a chair with a
wumph that knocked her own breath out. “Look at me,” she said. “A fat
cow in these clothes. You’d be ashamed of me for a mother. Anybody’d be
ashamed of me.”
    â€œNot me!”
    Oh no, she’d take her out and parade her around and say “my mother”
every second sentence. “I think you’re perfect,” she said. Mrs. Starbuck wasabout as far as you could get from that pretty little blue-eyed mother she
remembered but she’d do. She’d do just fine. “I’d just love it, Mrs. Starbuck.”
    â€œWell I’ve had one husband already, all I could bear in